experienced that luxury of isolation which normally is enjoyed by men
alone, in conjunction with the attention naturally bestowed on a woman
young and fair. Among the presentations were Mr. and Mrs. Tynn, member
and member's mainspring for North Wessex; Sir Cyril and Lady Blandsbury;
Lady Jane Joy; and the Honourable Edgar Mountclere, the viscount's
brother. There also hovered near her the learned Doctor Yore; Mr. Small,
a profound writer, who never printed his works; the Reverend Mr. Brook,
rector; the Very Reverend Dr. Taylor, dean; and the undoubtedly Reverend
Mr. Tinkleton, Nonconformist, who had slipped into the fold by chance.

These and others looked with interest at Ethelberta: the old county
fathers hard, as at a questionable town phenomenon, the county sons
tenderly, as at a pretty creature, and the county daughters with great
admiration, as at a lady reported by their mammas to be no better than
she should be. It will be seen that Ethelberta was the sort of woman
that well-rooted local people might like to look at on such a free and
friendly occasion as an archaeological meeting, where, to gratify a
pleasant whim, the picturesque form of acquaintance is for the nonce
preferred to the useful, the spirits being so brisk as to swerve from
strict attention to the select and sequent gifts of heaven, blood and
acres, to consider for an idle moment the subversive Mephistophelian
endowment, brains.

'Our progress in the survey of the castle has not been far as yet,' Lord
Mountclere resumed; 'indeed, we have only just arrived, the weather this
morning being so unsettled. When you came up we were engaged in a
preliminary study of the poor animal you see there: how it could have got
up here we cannot understand.'

He pointed as he spoke to the donkey which had brought Ethelberta